Feb 10 2008
Genealogy Pages
Since posting our Genealogy pages a little over a year ago, I have been amazed by the number of contacts that have been made by people searching the internet for family genealogy information. I have had people from as far away as Australia and Denmark contact me regarding our genealogical records.
One of the areas in which I have had little success in is gathering genealogical information on my mother’s side of the family. My grandmother Klein died when my mother was just 6 years old, and my Grandfather Klein died when she was in her mid-20’s. As such, we had very little information regarding our Klein heritage and relatives. My mother and her brother Paul are the only two offspring, and they had lost contact with aunts/uncles and cousins over the years. That has made the research very difficult, and I have been unable to trace the Klein roots back beyond Jacob Klein, my Great-Grandfather who was born in Hungary circa 1868.
Well, today I had a nice surprise in my inbox as my mother’s cousin (one of Jacob Klein’s grandsons) found our genealogy pages online and contacted me from his home in California. My mother and her brother had lost touch with him over 40 years ago and did not know if he was even still living, and if so where. I received a couple of nice e-mails from him regarding his family and we exchanged phone numbers. My mother is ecstatic to have made contact after all of these years, as is her brother Paul who I also contacted with the information! We plan to call him later in the week when my parents arrive from Vermont while they are on their annual trek south to Florida. It turns out his son, who is my age, is an Emmy Award winning editor in the LA area. Karen and I lived in the LA area for 3 years and never even knew we had relatives in the area. It just goes to show you what a small world it is! Although I never knew them, I find it neat to find out a little about others who share your ancestry. What an amazing resource the internet is, especially in terms of genealogical research!
2 responses so far
sweet! nice find! I still get lots of similar emails and have instances where my mother and grandmother have made phone contact with long lost relatives or ones they never knew… of course, I have gotten a few of the opposite reaction too where they demanded I take them off my tree because I was risking their security by posting their name on a (gasp) internet site…
I’m not sure if I’ll be of any help to the two of you, but I’ve got a site with a few family trees that I’m working on. Do either of you know any place where I can find some Canadian Tobins? Specifically the ones that landed on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia?
Cool to find a few tobin genealogy sites out there!